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Sparkle (1)
New relationships are always fun and exciting. New relationships + Fibromyalgia? Mmm, not so much. No, I’m not saying that you can not have a full, exciting healthy relationship with fibromyalgia, it’s just the beginning of the relationship that is the seemingly the hardest. Why? Well, because fibromyalgia is a big part of our lives. No, we always struggle to never let it get the best of us but it is something we will eventually have to share with the one that we love.
Ten years ago, the combination of having mononucleosis + a cortisone sent me over the edge, I found myself with a number of ailments including Fibromyalgia. Then, I was a 20 year old, single, college student. Now? I am a single, 30 year old mother. In the past ten years, I have been in a handful of relationships. I am amazed how time flies; I am amazed that I have had this disease for ten years. The hardest part about being single and having fibro is the thought of someone not wanting to be with you because of it. Ten years ago, I had doctor after doctor tell me that what I was experiencing was all in my head. “You’re just depressed.” “You’ve got too much yeast.” I finally stumbled on this disease called Fibromyalgia and just knew this is what I had. With the medical field not knowing a lot about it and me not knowing much myself, it was scary to think about having a relationship with someone.
I mean, if I didn’t know what the hell I had, how are they going to understand it? What if they tell me it’s all in my head? What if they try to tell me it isn’t real? Obviously, there were a lot of ‘what ifs’. I flew into the dating world head first. You might be surprised at how easy it was for me to hide the fibro. Before a date, I would take it easy and maybe even take a nap ahead of time, this way I knew I would be rested. Of course, my date had no idea that I had basically slept the entire day just so I could spend time with them. Going out on dates help to get the mind off of the pain and was actually kind of therapeutic. One of the questions I always pondered was, “When do I tell them I’m sick?” I came to the conclusion that I was going to hold off as long as I could. If you want to scare someone off quickly, tell them you have some sort of disease that they’ve never heard of, right?
I was fairly decent at playing the “I’m perfectly healthy” game. I didn’t want to come across as a weakling. I didn’t want anyone to think I was fishing for attention. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, but most of all, I didn’t want someone to judge me. Yes. I considered dating fairly easy. This was only because it was two to three hours, one night out of the week. Hey, if I had a bad flare up…I always had the option to cancel and say I had the flu, um… a really ‘bad’ case of the flu.
No, it wasn’t dating and isn’t dating that is the hardest when you have fibromyalgia. At least, not in my opinion. The hardest part for me is and was progressing past those dates and formulating a real relationship. Each time I knew things were getting serious; I knew I was getting closer to the day I had to tell them. Each day I knew I was getting closer to them figuring out that something was wrong with me. I would argue with myself about telling them, “If you don’t tell him he’s just going to think you are lazy”. Even in my relationship now, my boyfriend
